Saha, Rajib

Professor Rajib Saha is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the Indian School of Business (ISB). His current research interest includes network markets, group purchasing in healthcare, healthcare information systems, software product development, etc. Prior to joining ISB, he taught graduate level courses in the area of Operations Management and Information Systems at the University of Rochester, and worked in the IT industry for several years at organisations such as Oracle and Novell.

Saha received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Rochester, New York and B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Published Papers

Saha, Rajib.,Seidmann, Abraham.,Tilson, Vera. (2018) "The Impact of Custom Contracting and the Infomediary Role of Healthcare GPOs", Production and Operations ManagementRead Abstract >Close >Manufacturers and distributors of expensive implants and other medical supplies often require buyers to sign non-disclosure agreements treating all information concerning negotiated prices as trade secrets. Such agreements make it difficult for hospitals to obtain accurate pricing benchmarks. To save on procurement costs and to obtain pricing information, most hospitals in the United States join group purchasing organizations (GPOs). GPOs are believed to lower procurement costs by aggregating hospitals’ demand. Whether GPOs indeed add value to the healthcare supply chain and produce actual savings for hospitals are debated policy issues, as evidenced by the ongoing discussions on the topic in the U.S. Congress. Some hospitals procure using GPO contracts, and some try to improve on prices available via GPO contracts, negotiating custom contracts directly with the GPO vendors. Using a game-theoretic model, we prove that GPOs that operate independently and allow for custom contracting limit the benefit of demand aggregation to smaller hospitals only. The larger hospitals gain primarily from using the GPO as an infomediary to obtain critical pricing information benchmarks. Our results further explain why the introduction of custom contracting lowers the value of access to this pricing information for the hospitals, and how the savings through custom contracting can be misleading. We reveal how GPO vendors can exploit information asymmetry about their prices and earn even higher profits, and why, contrary to the industry’s belief, the resulting savings are never higher for any hospital, not even for the larger ones when the GPOs allow custom contracting.

Mehra, Amit.,Saha, Rajib. (2017) "Utilizing Public Betas and Free Trials to Launch a Software Product", Production and Operations ManagementRead Abstract >Close >Many software product firms release a public beta prior to launching its product. Public betas are adopted by innovator consumers and firms use free feedback from these consumers to improve the quality of the product. While trying out the public beta, innovators also learn their product preferences accurately. In addition, opinions expressed by the innovators about the software on public forums like blogs, etc., can introduce a perception bias about the product's quality among the imitator consumers. Therefore, there are demand and cost side trade-offs in introducing public betas. In addition to public beta, firms can introduce product trials along with the product. Product trials serve as a learning mechanism for all consumers (innovators and imitators), unlike in the case of public betas where this benefit accrues only to innovators. We examine the firm's optimal strategies to introduce public beta and/or product trial. We show that introducing public beta does not necessarily result in a higher-quality product. However, even when the quality is lower, consumer surplus and social welfare can be higher. Interestingly, while introducing public beta in addition to trial may appear to be optimal, it may not always be so. We show that similar results hold for products with network effects. We also find that even though the marginal value of quality to consumers is higher for products with network effects, the quality of the product can sometimes be lower than the quality in absence of network effects.

Mantena, Ravi.,Saha, Rajib. (2012) "Co-opetition between Differentiated Platforms in Two-sided Markets", Journal of Management Information Systems, 29 (2 / Fall 2012), 109-139Read Abstract >Close >Technology is an important factor underlying the value propositions of intermediary platforms in two-sided markets. Here, we address two key questions related to the effect of technology in platform markets. First, how does technology asymmetry affect competition between platforms? Second, how does it affect the incentives for platforms to collaborate? Using a game-theoretic model of a two-sided market where technology strongly influences network value, we show that small asymmetries in platform technologies can translate into large differences in their profitability. We find that technology improvements by the inferior platform do not significantly increase its profits, but can reduce opportunities for fruitful cooperation, since collaboration is less likely in markets with closely matched competitors. We also show that collaboration is most profitable when it takes the form of direct network interconnection. Interestingly, collaboration may provide incentives for a dominant platform to accommodate entry, where it would not otherwise do so.

Conference Proceedings

Saha, Rajib.,Mantena, Ravi. "Competition and Strategic Partnership between Intermediary Platforms in the Presence of Heterogeneous Technologies", Proceedings of the 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2012

Saha, Rajib.,Seidmann, Avi.,Tilson, Vera. "A Research Agenda for Emerging Roles of Healthcare GPOs and Their Evolution from Group Purchasing to Information Sharing to Strategic Consulting", Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2010